Thomas W. Hodgkinson

Going overboard

The founder of Scientology’s stay in Corfu was brief but eventful

What is it about islands that appeals to little men with big ideas? It’s Corfu I’m thinking about, primarily. Napoleon was obsessed with the place. Kaiser Wilhelm owned a summer palace here, the neoclassical Achilleion, where he installed a huge and hideous statue of Achilles. Can I add George Osborne to the list? Perhaps I’d better not. There’s a far better figure to complete the triumvirate, if that’s the phrase: the sly, off-kilter and phenomenally litigious founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.

Last month, the Daily Telegraph ran an obituary of one John Forte, a former officer in the British Army, who had two claims to fame when it came to Corfu. The first was that he’d revived its tradition of playing cricket, which had lingered since British colonial days. The second was that, in August 1968, he had been honorary vice-consul when Hubbard hove into port in his 320ft former warship, the Scotsman, along with 200 or so of his black-uniformed disciples. They immediately set about winning over the harbour-master (always advisable on entering a marina). Then they turned their attentions to the wider community, and swiftly charmed them too.

How? By money, to begin with. Hubbard was rich and most Corfiots were poor. ‘It was a thirsty island and society,’ I was told by Marios Paipetis, a Corfiot lawyer who was in his twenties at the time. Tourism hadn’t quite kicked in, and the Scientologists were spending something like £1,000 a day. In addition, there were a lot of hotties — in uniform, too. The crew on board the Scotsman, and the two boats accompanying it, was seething with pretty girls, including Diana, Hubbard’s fresh-faced 16-year-old daughter. Local Greek guys, Paipetis included, were interested. They were like ‘the girls of Gaddafi’, he reminisced. Sadly, they wouldn’t go to bed with you, but they were easy on the eye.

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